The mosque of the imam who claims his grandson’s remains were at a jihadi compound in New Mexico denounced media coverage, calling it anti-Muslim propaganda.
Ali Abdul-Karim Judan, a representative of the grandfather’s mosque in New York, claimed Thursday that the media is using news of the jihadi compound to drive an anti-Muslim narrative, according to The Associated Press. Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, the imam’s son, is accused of training children at the New Mexico compound to commit school shootings in the name of Islam. (RELATED: 11 Children Rescued From New Mexico Compound Run By Armed Muslim ‘Extremists’)
Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe characterized Wahhaj and Lucas Morten, the other man with whom Wahhaj ran the compound, as “extremist[s] of the Muslim belief.” Judan disagreed, saying that the authorities should not have made that claim, and also disputed the allegation that Wahhaj and Morten were training the children to commit school shootings. Authorities recovered an AR-15 among multiple other firearms at the compound as well.
The imam of the Al-Taqwa Mosque in Brooklyn, whose name is also Siraj Wahhaj and who claims his 4-year-old grandson was found dead at the compound, has also had past ties to extremism. He is an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and he served as a character witness for Omar Abdel Rahman, also known as “the blind sheikh,” who was ultimately convicted for his role in conspiring to bomb the building.
The imam said, however, that he called authorities when a man in Atlanta alerted him to a message from his daughter in which she asked for food and claimed that she and the children were starving.
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